A Fine Hairdo

With a successful lowering and raising of the mast, and a low bridge, under our belt we felt a lot more relaxed and ready to enjoy all the sights that the Norfolk Broads had to offer.

There were many of them, and we hope you enjoy our choices for sharing with you.

We soon concluded that there are very few Broads vistas that don't include reeds gently waving in the foreground. While most of the reeds we saw were growing naturally, we did spot quite a few stooks of harvested reeds.


We didn't have to wonder what happened to all those reeds for long, as we soon noticed that just about every building we saw from the river was thatched with the very same Norfolk reed. It got simply everywhere and even the boat houses were thatched, as you'll see in my next picture.


The thatch gave the buildings great character and made them so distinctive and different from the houses in the area of our own bear cave, that we felt we must have travelled much further from home than we had.

We bet they're nice and cosy in the winter.

Back soon,

Lots of love Eddie and crew xxx

We Go Green

Today we're going to do something different; we're going to report on our latest adventure just after it's happened. As regular readers will know, our adventures have come so thick and fast in the past, that we've often had trouble keeping up and we've ended up talking about events some time after they've happened.

This adventure is different as it ended just a week ago so has a real contemporary feel to it and is very much fresh in our minds.

The main narrator is going to me, Eddie, so that should give you a clue that it is going to be aquatic in nature.


Look carefully at this picture and you will glean a couple of extra bits of important information.

The easy one is the sail and, yes, we were sailing, but the patches of reed should tell you that we hadn't taken to the high seas. What you are looking at is, infact, finest Norfolk reed, so the place we were sailing was the Norfolk Broads.

We'd decided to go green for this holiday, and arranged it long before the Icelandic volcano errupted, but as we departed for this adventure, driving for just over an hour across Norfolk, we were mighty glad we had, as the weekend of our departure co-incided with the middle of the flight ban.

We were therefore especially happy with our choice of hoiday, and that was before it had even started. As you will find out in the course of the next few posts, we got even happier as some wonderful days passed. We can't wait to tell you all about it.

Lots of love Eddie and crew xxx

Made in Norfolk

Another of our favourite programmes is Grand Designs. We are frequently amazed, at peoples' lack of control over spiralling costs. Sometimes it is unavoidable, and we always feel sorry for these people, but often people bring it on themselves, particularly when they keep changing their minds, and it is causing us to think that setting up some 'controlling your finances' workshops might be a new business line for Bears Unlimited.

We are often a bit behind in our viewing as we lead such busy lives, but recently we watched an episode where a thatched building had been destroyed by fire and was being rebuilt bigger and better than before. We felt quite proud that all of the reed for the thatch was supplied from a place in Norfolk not far from where we live.


On one of our recent strolls we watched the reed cutters at work and helped to protect a load of freshly cut reed from the elements and to get it ready for loading onto a lorry.

We can also happily confirm that there is plenty more reed where that lot came from, which is good news for our local bird and animal friends and our lovely North Norfolk landscape.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx